D-3, Monday, June 22, 2009 With the intense heat in north central Arkansas, any outside work must occur early, while it is still moderately cool. Kay finished a next-to-last appointment, giving us an extra day, Wednesday. We decided to check into leaving a day early, but the campgrounds at Custer State Park in South Dakota are booked solid, eliminating our adding a day on the front end of our already 3 days there, bouncing us back to our original departure day of Thursday. We’re doing “make do” work, killing time before departure, which included cleaning and organizing the 1^st floor garage—guess it needed it anyway.

D-2, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 We’re having sustained hot weather, with heat indices in the 100s. It’s miserable being outside in the heat and humidity for any length of time at all. The last of the toys (cameras, binoculars, etc.) went in the motor home this morning, and all the outside storage compartments were packed. We ran some errands in Mountain Home—buying groceries for the trip, changing our cell phone service, and buying some drain pipe to make a storage container each for a sewer hose and the 4 fly rods we’re taking! We also bought a new broadband modem, but after getting home, discovered it was not compatible with our router. To make things worse, Outlook on Donald’s computer had a corrupt file, and would not open. He spent all afternoon working on his computer while Kay returned the broadband modem. It seems like computer glitches arise immediately before each of our trips. Last time, Donald’s relatively new computer crashed. As bedtime nears, everything is back to normal.

D-1, Wednesday, June 24, 2009  We’re up early again because of the heat. We made final preparations on our property, i.e. Round Up and Insecticide, rolled the awning up, and moved the motor home to the front of the house. Kay finished loading last minute stuff, we put Battery Minders on the Expedition and Truck, and re-cleaned the house. Wow, our guests are going to have it nice! We hooked-up the Saturn, except for the Brake Buddy, and washed a final load of clothes. We opted to spend the night in the motor home so no more house cleaning. It’s bedtime, and the pre-trip portion of this trip journal is finished. Tomorrow morning, we’re off on another adventure of a lifetime!